


The Meaning of Nostalgia

by ohjustdisarmalready



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Aftermath of Temporary Character Death, Alternate Backstory Theory, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death Fix, Epic Friendship, Gen, Kidnapping, Mistaken Identity, Rescue Missions, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-01-23 01:30:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18539530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohjustdisarmalready/pseuds/ohjustdisarmalready
Summary: Lucien wakes up with tight lungs and a crushing pressure on every limb.Mollymauk, he thinks.Mollymauk!A story about one possible Molly backstory, and one possible resurrection.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Nostalgia = Nostos [return, home] + algia [pain]. The pain of wanting to return home, or, the pain of returning home.

Molly had a feeling, sometimes.

Most of the time, certainly, he’d be bullshitting his way through life—it was what he was good at. Anyone who had a problem with that could go fuck themselves. He had several creative suggestions to get them started.

But sometimes, he would get this feeling, like he was reaching for something he couldn’t quite feel. Like he was missing a limb, but he could almost still use it. Half under his control, it would reach for things.

It reached for Yasha, and she reached back. It reached for that bunch of assholes bothering each other in a bar in Trostenwald. It reached for cards in his readings, or the moon above, or places he passed by deep in the woods. It solidified around him when he made promises he intended to keep.

Sometimes, it reached for something, and he had no idea what. He only knew that he hadn’t got it.

Molly just has really good intuition, he supposed. Intuition that only sometimes worked. And that sometimes seemed to just yank him around at random.

It was _his_ , though, and that was all that mattered to him. It belonged to him and no one else, and that was that. There was nothing else important enough to understand or not to. It was just part of him that connected him to the world, and to other people. That let him know if the twins are fighting, if Desmond was going for a lonely walk, if there was something he needed to be present for going on somewhere else.

It was not intuition that told him to spit at that bastard Lorenzo. That was just spite, through and through. Fuck him. Lorenzo made some irrelevant noise, far away.

As his vision went dark and a wispy whiteness followed at the edges, he could feel Beau behind him, though he couldn’t see her. He kept his eyes open. He could hear a little sound as Beau saw what was happening—that he was dying—the others reacted, too, but he was fading too quickly to feel them; it was a ping in the dark. He could feel what Beau was seeing.

He could be certain of one thing.

He’d decided to die for her, so that she would live. That was the trade-off. She was going to to live. His intuition told him so.

That was the last thing his intuition told him before leaving him in a rush, curling around and clinging to her. Without it, he slumped down into nothing. It was worth it, he thought—he was ready to die, if this is how he was going to go. He'd had a pretty good life, but he was finished with it. He could give it up.

"Mollymauk Tealeaf," given a choice, chose to sacrifice himself; a sacrifice that ensured the safety of a companion through one more battle. Anyone else who made this choice would have passed on peacefully, final wish fulfilled.

But Mollymauk Tealeaf was not the only soul involved, and not everyone was willing to let him go.


	2. Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This could be the first chapter to a long fic about the M9 and Lucien's contrasting motives, but for now it stands as a oneshot. I'll probably be putting it up some time in June or July, once I have a pretty significant backlog finished to post consistently. Also, content warning: "it" is used (not maliciously) as a personal pronoun towards a non-pov character.
> 
> Explanation of the magic behind all of this got complicated, so a full summary is at the bottom.

Lucien wakes up with tight lungs and a crushing pressure on every limb.

Too broad to be manacles, too solid to be underwater, something is sitting on his chest—the this is too dark to be smoke, his lungs sting differently; he’s out of the burning city, where is he? Did it work? He doesn’t remember getting back to the ritual circle that would bring him back to his body; he was…running? Where is he? What’s crushing him?

He immediately begins to struggle—did one of the buildings collapse on him? Why is he on his back?—and manages to wrest his arms upward. He pushes at the substance above him, holding his breath past the first strangled gasp. Whatever is in his throat, smoke or ash or something else, breathing in more of it will only hurt him.

Whatever it is, it’s heavy, but not impossible to push towards his feet. His lungs burn, though. The reflex to cough is getting stronger—nothing on what he felt after drinking the Hunter’s Bane poison, no, but if he doesn’t get air soon he’ll get more of this shit in him, like it or not. Where is the surface? He has no way of knowing whether he’s going up. It’s not worth taking the time to figure out where ‘up’ is, either. There’s no guarantee that the closest fresh air is above him.

He may not be able to get to it, wherever it is. The debris he’s buried in moves, but doesn’t seem to end. He can’t find the air.

Lucien could very well die here, without ever succeeding in the ritual—or has he? Had he gotten far enough? Did he make it?

 _Mollymauk_ , he thinks, with desperation. _Mollymauk!_

A surge of familiar energy, bright and finally unrestrained, bursts forth from him, as the Mollymauk responds with a push of its own. One star-bright push and the world erupts around him.

 _Air_. He can breathe! Debris scatters and he claws up the steep side of his would-be tomb, getting his legs free with a final pull. He can feel the Mollymauk helping him along, a feeling like hands on his shoulders, pulling his arms until he scrambles out of what feels like a shallow grave.

He crawls forward, swiping at his eyes and finally hacking up what must be half his lung capacity in smoke—not smoke, he realizes, blinking his blurry vision into something functional. It’s not even ash he’s been choking on. It’s dirt.

He’s covered in dirt, coming out of a hole in the ground in some sort of…not a city, wherever he is. Too many trees, too much nature, no ruins at all that he can see through coughing fits and his dim, blurry vision. He’s not in the City anymore.

Coughing is taking more air than he has right now. His chest clenches and his body seizes; he drops to his elbows. He can only hope nothing hostile will find him now. He’d put up a fine fight, surely, curled over the ground and coughing out any air he gets in.

His vision isn’t clearing up. If anything, it’s dimming. If he doesn’t get his breathing under control, he’s going to pass out, and killing him won’t just be possible; it’ll be child’s play.

The Mollymauk is responding, though. Wherever he is, the Mollymauk is here, too, in some capacity. More than before.

He can feel his friend’s energy in his very soul, more connected than he’s ever felt before, even in dreams.

With a thought—he can’t tell if it’s his own or not—the Mollymauk manifests. It shines with a glow he can see, even with his vision dim at the edges, clearing slowly he forces his coughs to give way to gasps.

“Moll—” he gasps. “Molly—”

“Hey, there, take it a second,” he hears. “That’s it, there’s a boy. Don’t force it. You can breathe. Plenty of air. See? Plenty of air. Breathe, ah, er…Lucien…? Nona—uh, Nonny? Just—deep— _even_ for me, don’t force it, you’ll choke yourself—that’s good, you’re doing fine. Good.”

His breath tries to catch with each inhale, but he leans into the semitangible presence rubbing his back with sure, firm force, and with an act of sheer will, he’s able to stop coughing, breathing shakily through his nose though his body screams for air.

“Call me Nonny again,” he rasps, his first words back in his body. “I dare you.”

Shouldn’t the others be here? He blinks rapidly, looking around—it’s bright daylight, in a grove he doesn’t recognize.

“Is this…the Feywilds? Where are the others?” he asks the Mollymauk, who has resumed its favored appearance as a tiefling-shaped creature of improbable colors.

He looks down at his own hands—sure enough, they’re a soft lavender color, now, completely unlike the red he’s accustomed to. A symptom of the ritual; he matches the corruption of the City—or he matches the Mollymauk. Even he’s not sure which.

“I really do hate to say this,” says the Mollymauk. “But, uh. What’s the last thing you remember?”

There had been…Lucien’s fractal group, the Tomb Takers, had turned up something that would help. Finally. A mage with some sort of beacon, a focus that could manipulate a person’s very soul.

A focus, in fact, which could separate one’s soul from one’s body, and send a person’s spirit to a ruined and poisonous City that would kill their body.

He had made it there, right? He’d seen the desiccated spires and shattered remains of buildings, lost to time and the corruption that had overtaken the City. For the first time, he had seen the nine-sided coin that contained the Mollumauk, turning its energy to the purposes of the ancient City.

He’d gone to find his old friend’s body, to reunite form and soul and free it of its prison.

There had been something…a trap? Some sort of guard of that place? All he can remember is fire, and even that memory is fading, becoming blurry and aching. If not for the lasting sting in his lungs, he’d prefer not to think of it at all.

“I was in the City…I was separated from my body, I should have been almost impossible to harm, short of magic. I was getting back to the ritual circle. I think…” His hand automatically goes to his chest. There’s a new know of scar there, an irregularity past what smaller scars he’s gained in his pursuits. Touching it sends cold lancing through his very bones, and the apparition of the Mollymauk jerks towards him.

“Don’t!” the Mollymauk says. “That is, uh. Perhaps that’s not the best idea.”

Its accent—a little different now, in the waking world, but still present—is forced into submission within a sentence. Lucien frowns at the illusory form.

“Why are you talking like that?” he says.

The Mollymauk might be sweating, if it were more corporeal. In this form, it looks nearly like a ghost.

“Like what? I’m talking how I always do,” it says—just slightly off-beat, hesitating a little too much between each word. Lucien’s brow furrows.

“You don’t have to sound like me,” he says. “I assure you, once we find the others, they won’t be hostile if you sound like yourself more than me. You’re not the only ally we have that’s crossed a distance to join us.”

“…yeah,” the Mollymauk says. “Um. Right. That.”

Oh. Oh, of course, Lucien is being stupid. Of course the Mollymauk is hesitant, it hasn’t met anyone but Lucien for a very long time. For reasons Lucien cannot quite understand, the Mollymauk is very invested in people liking it. Some people, at least.

“I assure you, once they get used to you they’ll tolerate you,” Lucien says. “We may be a group united by raging paranoia, but you’re a useful ally. If I vouch for you, I’m sure you’ll have the charm to worm your way into their good graces. It can’t be worse than where you’re coming from, right?”

The Mollymauk pastes on a nervous smile, clearly trying its best to seem at ease. Normally it’s a bit of a better liar than this; the break from its normal existence must be troubling it.

Fair enough, since it’s been a rock for the past…however long it’s been. Even a noncorporeal magical manifestation is a significant step up from that.

“It’s alright. The hard part is over now. All that’s left is the end of the world,” Lucien tries. Admittedly, some part of him does feel as if the apocalypse must be less work than retrieving the Mollymauk had been.

“Yep. End of the world, here we come,” the Mollymauk echoes. It doesn’t look less dubious, but it seems to settle, deliberately, after a moment.

Lucien relaxes, which sets off another fit of coughing.

The Mollymauk frowns, brow furrowed in some concentration, or puzzlement.

“I—are you…alright?” it asks.

It reaches out—more hesitant than he’s ever seen it—and flicks his hair, inexplicably longer than it was before the ritual. Though it’s semicorporeal at best, its finger manages to knock loose a shower of dirt.

As if summoned by the Mollymauk’s words, the ache of his lungs and in his whole body returns in a rush, softened only slightly by its borrowed power. This feels almost worse than resurrections. That might be the entombment, though.

“I’ll recover,” Lucien assesses, feeling out the pain. It isn’t unmanageable. “I may need to draw more magic from you than I’d planned to right off. I’d hoped to avoid using too much of your energy before we can restore you. So much for that plan.”

Consciously, he drops the flow of energy between them a little.

Without the stream of vivacious energy assisting, his body immediately hurts like all hell, and the…wound? Scar? on his chest spikes through him. Ugh. He can’t avoid a grimace.

The Mollymauk rocks back on its illusory heels, more colorful and slightly less tangible now that its power is being pulled on less. It is then that Lucien notices the coat.

“You really don’t need to confine yourself to planar physics right now. Perhaps when you meet the others it would be a good idea, but I don’t know where they’ve got off to. For now, I think you’re alright to let go,” he says, gesturing towards the Mollymauk’s illusory getup. Its normally shifting, glittering aura has confined itself to a stationary overcoat and tattoos, the patterns somehow reminiscent of its true form, but less…mind-breaking? Animate?

Lucien isn’t even going to try to convince it to use a face that doesn’t look exactly like his. It’s a losing battle; the Mollymauk won’t understand. He’s not entirely certain it differentiates between humanoids at all, with a few notable exceptions.

“I…think I’ll keep like this for now, if it’s all the same to you,” the Mollymauk says. “I can, of course, change. If I wanted to. But I don’t. Yes.”

Lucien nods—he’s too tired and aching to bother fighting it if it’s decided on taking his form. Perhaps it prefers something familiar.

Now that he looks around, he’s clearly in the prime material plane, but he can’t tell much else. It’s cold, probably towards the north, but he doesn’t even know what season it is. This doesn’t look like the ritual circle.

“Are we safe enough here, for the day? I’m not sure I can get far right now, and I don’t want to cause harm to you by drawing on your power,” he says.

The Mollymauk eyes him in that assessing way it has, sort of flat and unattached.

He hates this look. It’s like his old friend has forgotten all their time together and is measuring him up as a stranger, deciding whether he’s worth its time or not.

Now that they’re in the waking world, some part of him fears what it might decide—but that’s ridiculous. He and the Mollymauk are truly friends. If it were just using him, he’d know by now. He has to trust its sincerity, even if he doesn’t entirely understand why it ever chose to appear to him, of all people.

“About that,” the Mollymauk says. “Remind me again why that is? All of that. With the power and the drawing on it. And where we’re going. And where you think we are. Just, all of it.”

“Ah, all of it?” he asks. “I’m not entirely certain why I was underground, but I imagine that must be why I’m as exhausted as I am. That, or the ritual took more out of me than I’d accounted for. That’s no real obstacle, I’ll recover.”

He doesn’t want the Mollymauk thinking he’s too badly off on its behalf. It’ll only set off another round of fighting over whether any of this was a good idea in the first place.

“No, that’s—that’s good? But I meant the…powers, and the drawing, and all of that. From the top, if you could,” it says, still in that slightly-off accent. It sounds _almost_ like it always does, which makes it seem odder than if it had decided to keep to Lucien’s mannerisms as it had adopted his form.

Is it…quizzing him? Now, of all times?

“Not that I’m entirely averse to your riddles, but I do think it’s a little late to be worrying about whether I understand our contract, at this point,” Lucien says, hauling himself to a crouch with a worrying amount of effort.

The Mollymauk almost reaches to guide him to his feet, but withdraws before its semi-tangible hands can reach him. It must be rattled more badly than he’d thought by the transition from the City to the outside world.

Lucien is not the best versed in comforting others, but he nudges through its shoulder with his own as he rises to his feet, shakily. He turns to look at the hole he’d risen from.

It is undeniably a grave.

There is a marker over the head of it, opposite of where he’d crawled out, and from it hangs a heavy coat of many fabrics. He can see where the Mollymauk drew its inspiration from, in making its current form—or did the coat come from the Mollymauk’s true form? The colors and patterns seem familiar to it somehow, though they seem entirely too pinned down, all captured in tangible, unchanging fabric clippings. It holds none of the life and movement he’s used to associating with the Mollymauk.

The grave itself is shallow. Unusually so. Perhaps it was only ceremonial, that he might rise out of it? Or it was filled in as he climbed out. There’s a ripped blanket, or perhaps some tapestry, still half-buried in it. One of the sides is caved in from the blast of blind power he’d drawn from the Mollymauk; probably the only thing that had allowed him to reach the air before he’d suffocated. He should have been more careful about guarding his face and conserving his breath.

The Mollymauk draws a little closer, staring at the grave. It takes half a step sideways, towards Lucien.

“I just don’t understand how we got to be here,” Lucien thinks aloud. “I’d planned for your arrival—we should be somewhere safe. Save for one, we should be surrounded by my people. Now we’re here, wherever here is, and I’m—I don’t know why no one is here. It’s just us.”

For a moment, neither of them says anything. The atmosphere weighs down as Lucien tries to figure something out—how they got here, where they should go.

“I think…I don’t understand, either,” The Mollymauk finally says, quietly. “I don’t—I thought you were—”

It turns to Lucien, questioning. Even the Mollymauk, proud to the core, looks smaller and more fragile than he’s ever seen it. It looks like it could be his brother: just a lost tiefling, alone, standing over a grave.

Lucien has wished, before, that it would act a little more like a mortal. Now, he is finding that he doesn’t like the taste.

Well, isn’t this why he’s done all that he has, though? Wasn’t it always to pay back to the Mollymauk the years of companionship and unwavering support it has shown him? In this world, he is the one with the experience, the connections. Perhaps it was more unsettled than he’d thought it would be by being so abruptly sprung from its centuries-long captivity—he can watch over the both of them until it gets its feet under it once more. Together, the two of them are unstoppable.

“We’ll figure this out,” he promises. “I’ve told you all about the others already—they don’t know as much about you as you do them, but we’ll find out where we are and I’ll bring you to meet them. They’re good people. You’ll like them. I had to bring in someone from outside the Tomb Takers for the ritual; worst-case scenario, they’re dealing with her right now. We’ll catch up to them and get this taken care of first thing.”

He waves his hand, and in it is the nine-sided amber prism the Mollymauk had been imprisoned in for lifetimes, up until just now. Having only completed the ritual to help it escape the City—though he doesn’t remember actually completing that—the coin still holds a majority of the Mollymauk’s power; perhaps some of its soul, too.

All he’s managed is to allow part of it to be separated from the rest. The apparition he sees before him is only a part of his friend, channeled through the part of it that he absorbed into his own soul, so that the Mollymauk could escape the City with him when he left.

Having bonded the Mollymauk’s metaphysical existence to his own also provides a neat failsafe—the Mollymauk will be summoned from anywhere if Lucien is near to death. It seems the ritual has completed successfully, but if it had not, at least the Mollymauk would have been freed of the City at Lucien’s eventual death. Now it’s just a redundancy; Lucien can’t imagine he’ll be dying alone if the Mollymauk is free to prevent it.

If it still wants to spend all its free time with a mortal blood hunter. It does have other options, now. It could do theoretically anything. He can’t imagine anyone would say no to an ally with an Archfey’s power alone, even a young one unused to being free to use its abilities for its own purposes.

No. The Mollymauk isn’t like the dark politics and entrenched apathy of the Ghostslayers. Lucien’s search for the power required just to get to his old friend’s prison, let alone release him, has taken him to dark places; just as the Mollymauk had warned that it would. But the two of them are better than all of that. Lucien has to remember why he’s done this.

His oldest friend and ally is free now, and nearly whole. Once they get home, Lucien can do one final ritual and never speak to that Solstryce bitch again. Himself and Mollymauk and the Tomb Takers can go from there.

The Mollymauk is looking at the coin that had imprisoned it, which holds most of its power still; reaching tentatively towards it and tilting its head even as it leans full-body away from its recent prison. Lucien quickly closes his fist around it again, covering it from view.

“I’ll keep it safe. You don’t have to see it until we can destroy it,” he promises.

“…Nonagon,” the Mollymauk mutters, looking at where the nine-sided shape—the nonagon, to be technical—had been.

Ah. Yes.

Lucien feels a flush rise in his cheeks. He tucks the coin safely out of view in the trousers he’s wearing—that’s not the outfit he remembers entering the ritual in, which is certainly something he’ll have to confront later.

“Ah, I hope you don’t mind. I…you said not to use my real name in the City rituals, but it did call for something that meant something to me…I made the assumption that you wouldn’t mind if I, ah, borrowed from you. You have had some image of the coin on you as long as I can remember,” he says, looking away.

He doesn’t even know how it knows what name he’s been using for himself. Somehow, the Mollymauk can make him feel twelve years old without even trying.

Perhaps because it knew him when he was twelve years old. And laughed at him. Frequently.

“I don’t mind,” the Mollymauk decides. “That’s, really, it’s fine by me. Go ahead and have it, I don’t want it.”

It glances at him sidelong, so he makes the effort to smile. Funny, he’d almost feared his face would have forgotten how to do that in these long years, but now it’s easier than ever. The Mollymauk offers him a funny smile back.

The furrow in its brow is right where he can distantly remember his mother smoothing over, when she was alive. _Your frowning face is handsome, but I’d like to see you smile_ , she would say.

There are so many things it’s picked up from him already. He hopes it can find a better example of what happiness looks like.

Well. No sense dwelling; he’s got better things to do than stare down a grave.

“We should set something up for shelter. You may not be able to freeze, but I can,” he says, and the Mollymauk breaks out of introspection at his call.

Good. It’s not a creature meant much for brooding.

It walks over to the grave marker, swiping a hand through the coat.

It tries again, grabbing through the coat and marker both.

The Mollymauk turns to Lucien.

“A little help here?” it asks, raising one eyebrow.

Lucien isn’t certain how shaken it is still, but he risks a joke.

“You seem to have it well in hand,” he says.

“Just—” It tries to grab the coat again, ruffling the fabric a bit, but not connecting. It hunches its shoulders miserably. “Just help me.”

“Certainly,” Lucien says, hooking the coat on his fingertips and throwing it over his shoulder for now. He’d feel odd wearing something so clearly representative of the Mollymauk—though that’s perhaps his right, now. He is the Mollymauk’s representation in physical reality, at least until they can break that damned coin.

“Thanks,” it mutters.

“I’ve got maybe a hundred yards in me before I can’t get any farther,” Lucien says, letting the moment go. “Would you mind scouting ahead for somewhere to set up for the night? You’re, ah, less…physically disposed right now.”

The Mollymauk nods sharply. “Right. Place to sleep. This will all be…somehow…better in the morning.”

It darts forward before he can ask whether it even needs sleep—it never has before. He can’t follow quickly enough by a long shot, so he tracks its movement with his eyes until the slight glow of a disembodied spirit vanishes between the trees.

He can still sense the Mollymauk, manifested through their agreement with one another. He’s not sure how far it can get from him, but far enough, for now.

He sags heavily onto the stake in the ground that marks his grave. He doesn’t dare sit down. He’s not sure he could get back up if he did.

He turns his face upwards to the clear, bright sky.

It’s just the two of them—him and the Mollymauk. The Tomb Takers are…somewhere, he’s sure. Somewhere else, as soon as the two of them can find them. The world is in the same state as it was when he started his quest to bring his lifelong companion out of the City. The Mollymauk is acting oddly, and Lucien himself couldn’t fight a wet kitten right now. He doesn’t know where the Beacon is, or the Solstryce wizard, and he doesn’t trust any part of that.

The clearing he’s in is scuffed and bloodied. Something happened here, and he’s not sure he’s going to like it when he finds out what.

Nonetheless, the Mollymauk and Lucien are alive and free. After decades of training, plotting, schmoozing; easing his way into the confidences of the right people and getting the power he needs, it’s finally time to start.

The end of the world won’t wait forever, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Explanation of Magic Shenanigans**  
>  "Mollymauk" is a species name. Molly is just one Mollymauk (in fact, the only one, but we didn't have time to get into that). A long time ago, he got turned into a magic battery. His soul was taken out of his body and put in a magic rock (the Nonagon). From the magic rock, he essentially yelled into the void until he stumbled into Lucien's dreams. Being Lonely As Fuck, he taught Lucien pretty much anything he wanted to know growing up. Lucien used this knowledge to become a blood hunter.
> 
> Lucien did the ritual we all know of from canon in order to retrieve Molly The Magic Rock. He pretty much absorbed part of Molly's "soul" (molly is a magical creature he can do that dwbi) and went to get the rock, but was killed in the process. A warlock-like pact between him and Molly brought that small part of Molly's soul to Lucien's body, creating the Molly we know and love. Molly still has no memory of any of this.
> 
> When Molly died, the unfinished ritual to bring the rest of his magical essence to the prime material plane wrapped itself up, since nothing was keeping it suspended anymore. Lucien (with magic battery rock) appeared in Lucien's body. Our Molly got relegated to being an incorporeal spirit bc he,, doesn't have a body to live in. rip
> 
> Lucien intends to smush all the magic of the rock back into Molly, who has no idea who he is. Molly is not so certain about this.
> 
> Vis a vis pronouns: Rock!Molly had never met a gender in his life and didn't care. He now prefers he/him, but it wasn't exactly a great time to discuss gender identity, so that got pushed off for later. If I continue this 'verse I'll address that later.
> 
> ...so that was a trip. btw I'm on [tumblr](hahanoiwont.tumblr.com), please let me know how you like this 'verse!


	3. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beau hasn't been sleeping well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I first wrote this, it was right after Molly died and I didn't plan on publishing it. After that, the person I watch CR with moved temporarily and I haven't been able to watch it since, so while I have seen spoilers, I don't know all of canon from recent episodes. I'm not going to try to replicate what I haven't seen. Instead, I'm going to follow the plot I constructed immediately after the episode aired. Consider this semi-AU from this point onwards.

The night after Molly’s death, Beau dreams.

She doesn’t remember it well. She doesn’t know what happens, or what it’s about.

She has a pretty good fucking guess, though.

All she can remember is a riot of color: greens with little red and purple flowers; blue, blue water in a pond too sparkling and beautiful to be real. And then terror, screaming, too much blood on the rich green grass and too much rapid movement to track it all. Chaos. And then she wakes up.

It’s like someone took the battlefield and turned up all the color and people and noise, and she wakes up with a red imprint on the backs of her eyes that she has to blink away as she sits up.

Caleb’s eyes flick to her, rest a moment, and flick away. He stares into the embers of their fire.

She wants to say something, but what the hell is there? What is there to say? She’s barely started learning how to play nice with other people. If she says anything now, she’s afraid she’ll shatter them all into pieces.

There’s nothing she can do. So she rolls up her bedroll and gets ready to get moving. Best to get started early—who knows how long they’ll be traveling until they can shadow these guys back to base.

They’re one down. Forever. They’re getting the rest of their group back.

* * *

 It takes the Shepherds two weeks to get back to the dilapidated outpost they’re apparently using to house captives. The remaining members of the Mighty Nein are right behind them. When they next make a rescue attempt, it’s almost obsessively planned.

They scope the place for _days_ —over a week that their friends are in chains and they can’t help them—but they need to be sure. They need to make absolutely sure nothing will go wrong. There are only three of them left and they can’t lose anyone else unless they’re sure they’ll be able to revive them, and that’s only in practical terms.

As far as grieving goes, only Nott seemed to be ready to start. Even Frumpkin, when he appears, seems to be avoiding the crippling silence, the dull lack of color, the absence of jingling decorations.

Beau even misses that godsawful coat sometimes. It wasn’t fair of him to take away all that color and noise when he went. She’s gotten used to it in her periphery, shining and clinking away. Now it just feels like something’s missing.

Well. A lot of somethings are missing.

Beau can’t sleep without Jester humming and drawing in the corner. Caleb’s endless loose papers and annoyed _tsch!_ at arcane sigils just don’t make up for the loss. And the nightmares don’t go away. Every night, Beau dreams that she’s walking to Molly’s grave, that he’s dying, that she’s killing him.

Tonight, though. Tonight. At least Jester and Fjord and Yasha will be found tonight.

Beau itches whenever they have to leave their watch over the broken-down fort the Shepherds have taken over. Anything could be happening. Anyone could be arriving, leaving, noticing. The guard shifts that haven’t changed in the past nine days might suddenly be different and she’ll be left with a fight she can’t win and a moment of terror— _this is how I die_ —and then horror— _no, this is how_ he _dies_.

She just wants to be keeping watch, okay? She just wants to stay on guard. They need to know _everything_.

Nott tips her flask to Beau, but for once Beau doesn’t think she can stomach alcohol. Can’t dull her senses like that. She needs to be sharp.

Something in the back of her head itches when Nott takes a swig anyway.

“We will take out Smiles at the half-shift mark, ja? After he has grown bored and talked to Leftie, and before he has begun to try to feed the deer. We will have seventeen minutes until he would normally return to the crumble in the wall, and then four for him to climb back to his post. Rightie will then expect a wave like so—” Caleb approximates a jerky wave.

“I thought it was more like this,” Nott says, half-saluting.

“Like…perhaps this? He does not hold all of his fingers together like that, his fourth is broken,” Caleb says. He recreates his wave.

It all looks exactly the same to Beau.

“No no, it’s like—” Nott starts.

“Does it fucking matter? When Smiles waves, Rightie goes back through the wall. We kill Smiles while he’s doing the deer shit, _we_ wave, Rightie goes back through the wall. We kill Leftie. We go through the hallway thing and kill Quad and Aces and Three, unless Three is with X, and then we kill Three and X while they’re snuck off or we kill X alone, then Rightie, wham bam pow.” Beau scratches their dirt-map aggressively with a stick, because it’s much more satisfying than her staff. And Caleb banned her from marking the paper maps eight days ago. Not like she’s destroying them any more than he is with his scribbles—they have to draw up a new one every time, and they’re almost out of paper.

“Are we sure it’s a good idea to do it clockwise? I just think—” Nott starts again, and Beau jabs her stick through the drawing of the card table Quad, Aces, and Three will be at.

“Don’t think. If we go counter-clockwise, the Quad group is gonna see us coming a mile away. We just kill them, go through, kill Pockets and then Lights and Magic, catch Studs on her way out, get in. Can I go back to watch now? Smiley’s shift starts soon.” Beau fidgets and glares into the trees.

She needs to be out there, making sure everything goes right, not back here in the bushes scratching out dirt for the hundredth time. They’ve been over this.

She needs to make sure their information is still accurate, not fuck around with the plan until it’s too convoluted to follow. She just needs to kill stuff.

“Beauregard,” Caleb says.

She hates it when he says that. “Beauregard,” like he’s so much better and calmer and collected when she knows he spent three hours yesterday burning individual leaves—the largest fire they can afford this close to the fort.

“We need to have a plan. We need to go in knowing what we’re doing, so we can make sure everything we can control is controlled well. We need to know what we’re doing,” Caleb says. Beau bares her teeth.

“We need to be keeping an eye on them! They could be doing anything in there! What if they get reinforcements, and we can’t see because we’re not paying attention?” she exclaims, leaping to her feet.

Caleb and Nott both make a move to stop her like she’s gonna go running off into the trees or some shit. She’s not a loose fucking cannon.

“Or Aces could be nodding at Smiley, like always, pausing for one and a half seconds to approach, like always, and they’ll chat like they always do, for some time from two minutes and fourty-five seconds to fourteen and thirty-eight,” Caleb says calmly. “We just need to wait for Smiley’s mid-shift tonight. And until then, we have time to go over the plan, and to sleep. We can’t be going in exhausted. Our advantage lies in being more alert than they are.”

Fuck him anyway, who died and made him king?

Fuck.

Bad choice of words, Beau.

“Maybe you should sit down,” says Nott, and when Nott thinks you need to calm down, you know you’re in trouble. But she needs to be _out there!_

She needs to watch out so she can watch their backs, so they don’t get into something they can’t get out of, so they don’t get hurt. No one can get hurt. She needs to watch the enemy. They need to know their information is good.

“We’ll be there in like five hours and you can kill them, but right now maybe sit down?” Nott tries. Beau’s back is so tense it hurts. She shouldn’t go into battle like that. She could get someone hurt. She needs to be better.

Caleb’s eyes are on her, unblinking, assessing.

She crouches next to the dirt map. It’s got dust over it from her jumping and pacing around. Messing it up like always.

She tries to push a few lines back into place.

That seems to satisfy Caleb and Nott.

“Right. I do think clockwise is the way to go, Nott, because there is less uncertainty. If we see Aces and Quad alone, we know not to expect X and Three to be alert. Rightie will also be the last to suspect something, because he does not interact with anyone until nearly fifty minutes later, when he is relieved from watch.” Caleb points to each mark still visible on the map as he refers to them.

“Right. Caleb, you’re so smart,” Nott says. Never mind that that was Beau’s idea.

“And then we kill them all, can we be done now?” Beau can’t help but fidget. Caleb sighs.

She’s trying, she really is. She just needs to be on watch. She _needs_ it.

“One moment more. Then we enter the structured part of the fort. Nott, you said Pockets will be inspecting her pockets at this time?” he says. Beau nearly groans—they’re gonna miss something important!

“Yeah, she has all sorts of things in them,” Nott says, keeping one wary eye on Beau.

That’s not fair of her. Beau’s only trying to keep them from getting surprised! She just doesn’t want them to get killed! And Caleb is at least as much of a loose cannon as Beau is. Why isn’t anyone looking at _him_ like that?

“Then we will kill Pockets before she can raise an alarm, and with luck we will surprise Magic and Lights before they can do anything that will catch attention. Nott, do you have your acid ready?” Caleb asks.

Nott shakes a little bottle at Caleb. Of course she has her acid ready. They’ve been planning this for a week!

“The plan is fine, we need to keep watch, let’s _go_ ,” Beau growls. “They could be doing anything and none of this will matter! What if Smiley went out early? What if he’s already headed to the deer? Then none of this is gonna do a damn thing because we weren’t there to catch him!”

It’s the wrong thing to say and she knows it as soon as it leaves her mouth—now Caleb’s gonna spend another night fretting and planning and planning and _planning_ until she’s ready to tear his hair out, and always making sure, just, do you _know_ that you know the plan Beau, this is important, like plans are gonna make a damned difference once they’re in there. Beau wants to know just what _plan_ of his included all of this shit.

Caleb just looks at her with flat, deep blue eyes, and she looks back.

It’s weird how her eyes sting when she does that. Or when she just…stops for a second. Weird.

This might be the stillest she’s been since—since. Except when she’s on watch. She doesn’t think of anything when she’s on watch.

She swallows all of it down and nods, once. She’s not sure why. Nott crowds close to her in what she’s learned in the past week is a goblin comfort thing, or maybe a Nott comfort thing. She may have learned it from the cat.

“Let’s go, then,” Caleb agrees, surprisingly easily. “Let’s go keep watch.”

Beau nods, a little off-balance. “Right. Yeah.”

She rises to her feet, ready to dart back to her post, when Caleb, still oddly convincing, lays his hand on her arm.

“Beauregard, you’ve been keeping very good watch. We have a lot of good information because of you,” he says.

“…yeah,” Beau agrees. That’s true. She’s been watching very carefully.

“I think it would be a good idea to go to sleep for now, wouldn’t you?” Caleb asks. Beau’s brow furrows.

“But someone has to watch. I have to make sure…” she says. Sleep does sound like a good idea, she’s so tired…but keeping watch, and the nightmares…

Caleb nods, still looking her right in the eyes. He doesn’t do that a lot. She’s not sure why. He seems very trustworthy when he does. Strange, because she knows he’s definitely not, like, stable.

Caleb smiles oddly. He does not have a face that is comfortable being gentle. He ends up looking kind of guilty. “What if I were to look out for a little while? You haven’t been sleeping very well. You should rest a little bit—perhaps until sunset? You can come back and be ready when it’s time to go. I will watch out until then, yes? Can you trust me to take over for a little while?”

Caleb is an untrustworthy bastard, but she sort of is too, and so are all of them. She can probably let him take over for a little while. He’s a good guy, for an asshole. He’s actually kind of nice.

“Yeah, I can do that,” Beau says. “You can watch. I’ll go to sleep.”

“That is excellent to hear, my friend. You can just rest here. I am sure you will come find us when you wake up,” Caleb says. “Ah, sorry about that.”

She’s not really sure what he has to be sorry about, so she says, “Yeah, that’s fine. See you in, like, four hours? I guess?”

“That is an excellent plan. I will see you then,” Caleb says, already moving into the brush to take up her post.

Beau yawns. She hadn’t realized how tired she really was until Caleb said something. She really hasn’t slept a night through since…since that fight. But Caleb is keeping watch for now. She can trust him.

She goes to sleep, and dreams.

* * *

  _Beau doesn’t want to reach the gravesite._

_The fog rolls over her feet and clings to her robe—each step is like wading through soup. She can’t see past her calves, and only vague figures through the thick mist indicate her companions around her—that skittering shadow must be Nott, and the looming shape that brushes silently past her is Yasha. The sparse flowers that have sprouted at the side of the road poke their heads through the thick, white blanket and float gently by as she walks past. Silence and wet chill lay heavily on her._

_She sees the silhouette of a hill in the distant fog and says nothing. It approaches steadily, unstoppable now that she’s seen it coming._

_There’s a little purple flower on the side of the road, reaching through the dense white. She looks for Yasha, to point it out, but the shadows of her friends have moved ahead._

_She stops for a moment, feeling bizarrely like a thief. She glances around, but there’s no one to see._

_When she kneels next to it, she can see brilliant green leaves surrounding the delicate bloom. They’re so bright—she doesn’t know what kind of plant this is, honestly she never paid much attention to that shit, but they must be young leaves. They shine with life, even with the sun hidden. And the little flower in the middle, larger now that she’s close to it, is flayed open in bloom._

_Without thinking, she reaches out to touch it._

_It wilts closed. As she watches, it begins to furl back up into a little violet cocoon surrounded by bright green._

_Closer now, she sees this flower was not alone. She is standing on crushed blooms, each flattened open and staining their own stalks with dark sap._

_The flower she approaches, with the shadows in the mist all around them, is the only one closed, jewel-tight and retaining its color. The others, ripped open, ripped apart, trampled; they bleed out to a wet darkness._

_In the distance, Beau can hear startled, angry voices._

_She leaps to her feet—and stumbles. On the ground, something is grasping at her feet, and she rips her boot free of sprouting roots as someone shouts far away—and she reaches out and breaks the flower free with a_ snap _—_

* * *

 “Oh, that asshole,” Beau gasps upon waking up. “Oh, that absolute—ugh!”

Caleb! She is going to wring his scrawny wizard _neck_ when she catches up with him. Four hours he charmed her into sleeping! What if something happened while she was out? What if they’d needed her and she’d been too far away because _he_ decided she’d needed a fucking nap? She is going to find Caleb, and if he hasn’t gotten himself killed she is going to murder him.

She darts through the bushes as stealthily as she can to their little cove they keep watch in. She doesn’t see Smiley on the ruined wall, but Nott is there in the bush, with Caleb standing behind. Caleb grimaces as she approaches.

The sun has just gone down. It’s getting cold. Damn it, she’ll need to be mad at Caleb later, it’s almost time to go.

“Where is he?” she murmurs, gesturing at the torch lit at Smiley’s post. They’re quite a ways out, but none of them dare speak above the barest breath. They can’t afford to be caught.

“ _He just sat down to take a nap_ ,” Nott’s voice is even hushed in her head. “ _You can reply to this message_.”

A nap her comrades definitely didn’t push along with magic. Assholes.

“ _Right. Time to go?_ ” Beau responds, not saying anything about how much of a dick Caleb is yet. She’s learned a lot about not rubbing salt into wounds lately. Fjord will be happy, when they get him back. Soon.

There’s a quiet moment while Nott confers with Caleb.

 “ _We’ll wait a bit for him to fall asleep and then we can start_ ,” Nott says. “ _Are you ready_?”

Hell, Beau’s been ready since Molly’s last breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :D I wanted to write Rescue Arc. I know this isn't canon, but it was fun, which is nearly as good.
> 
> Please let me know what you liked!


	4. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The missing members are retrieved, and Beau has odd dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's not Friday (rip) but it is Saturday, which is close! There was a hell of a storm where I am and power was out, so I couldn't upload anything :/
> 
> We're back up now, though, so here's the next chapter! I hope y'all like it!

“Where is Molly?” is Yasha’s first question, once each stolen member of their party is released, once they’ve killed Lorenzo and Caleb has burned him to ash.

Yasha looks around like she’s expecting Molly to come down one of the worn halls, or pop out of the shadows. Like he was just part of the rescue someplace else, and now he’s gonna join back up with them.

This is the part Beau’s been dreading.

_He’s been dead for three weeks, by the way, super sorry about that_ , she thinks hysterically. _I know you probably figured your best friend was safer with us than the actual literal slavers, but turns out, nope! We can’t fucking save anyone!_

She can’t say that, but it’s all she can think, and while she’s fighting that back, Nott (the Brave) has gathered her courage to say, “Lorenzo killed him.”

It’s like a shot through the heart. No one has said it out loud yet, for all it’s been echoing through her head when she sleeps. Beau wasn’t sure they _could_. But there, in three words—Lorenzo killed him. He’s dead. He’s gone.

His body hadn’t even looked like him once it stopped moving. Without the animation, the light, the bullshit and pizzazz, there was no Molly to be found in the corpse left behind.

Maybe it was that guy Lucien’s corpse, and Molly’s two years of existence were just wiped out. If you used to be someone completely different, do you even have a soul of your own?

“What? No. He wasn’t here. He wasn’t even here to fight Lorenzo. Where is he?” Yasha asks, looking like they’ve just told her there’s only one moon from now on, like they’ve spoken in Sylvan and she can’t understand what they’re trying to get across.

“Molly is dead,” Beau spits the words out like acid coating her throat and they burn like it, too. But they don’t stop burning once they leave her.

She knows she can say it, now.

Jester looks around like they might be hiding Molly somewhere— “Where is his body? I can bring him back if it hasn’t been very long. I need a diamond. Did you leave him in a hallway before you got to us?”

Caleb shakes his head, Nott pressed in against his side and Frumpkin on one shoulder. They make a sort of family portrait together. “No, that is not—Mollymauk died three weeks ago, fighting Lorenzo. We buried him there. We could not bring him back and we could not afford to stay with him. We—”

“You _buried_ him?” Yasha demands. “You put him in the _ground_?”

“We could not—” Caleb starts.

“No! You don’t—There is no—there’s no reason that can justify putting Molly in a grave. _Nothing_ ,” Yasha breathes raggedly and composes herself. Beau wants to go to her, but she can’t seem to move from where she is, hugging her staff against one shoulder.

Once she is centered, Yasha says, “If Molly is…dead. Even if that is true. He would not want to be underground.”

“Were we, then, to leave him to the wolves?” Caleb asks. “Or to carry him with us? What else could we do?”

Yasha shakes her head, angry and miserable, but says, “He’d want to be left to the wolves. Put some easy food in something’s belly, make one last use of his body.”

She’s miserable, but hell, who wouldn’t be?

And of course Molly would want something like that. Oh, but of course he would, damn him. He has to be a bleeding heart and now Beau’s the asshole for not wanting his body to be ripped apart and looted by the nearest opportunist.

There’s a moment of silence as Yasha shifts, and grips her sword, and glares at the ash where Lorenzo had stood fifteen minutes before. But even in this awful situation, the halls aren’t safe enough for her to take a moment for herself.

They’d gone to get the others, even as exhausted and strained as they were, before coming after the big guy. They weren’t going to jeopardize this rescue for a fight. Not with how important it is. Not with only three of them. Beau’s the only one they’d had left who can take half a hit, and all three of them are used to sneaking around anyway.

After a moment, Fjord nods, and Beau can only be relieved as her and Caleb’s temporary leadership is lifted.

Huh.

She’s always hated other people being in charge before.

“We’ve killed Lorenzo. We’ll kill every last one of these sons of bitches before they can get out and regroup. How long would you say we have before they realize some of their own are missing?” he looks to Nott, who firms up her face and stands up a little bit straighter. She’s been trying to do that, since Molly. Since Molly died.

“There’s six left. They were all in the same area, so we couldn’t shoot one without the others seeing. No one else was closer than the hallway,” she reports. “We killed all the others on the way in.”

“If they were reporting back in on the hour, we have fourteen minutes left,” Caleb adds. It’s a little weird how he always knows the exact minute, but useful as all hell right now.

“Right,” Fjord says. “We kill these six guys, we look through the place to make sure no one else is here, and we—”

“But what about Molly?” Jester’s clenched fist is trembling. Beau wants to help her, but she isn’t sure how. “We can’t just—we can’t just _leave_ him. We can’t just leave him!”

“We’ll go back once we’ve taken care of these fucks. We’ll resupply first—no sense starving halfway there. Then we’ll visit Molly.” He looks grim, and Beau doesn’t think he’s particularly sold on the idea that they can bring Molly back.

The three of them had looked it over that night at the grave, and they’d found nothing. There was nothing they could do in time.

But they killed son of a bitch who did this to them.

Funny how she doesn’t feel better after that.

Beau dreams again that night.

* * *

Beau doesn’t want to reach the gravesite.

She walks, stem clutched in her hand, through the dense mist—something small darts by her feet, and it must be Frumpkin. Just like the figure that bounces irregularly to her left must be Jester, skipping again—she’s handling the situation as well as she knows how. Of course Jester would try to be cheery (wouldn’t she?).

The thought slips through her mind.

She recognizes an odd configuration of trees on her right. A little one stems out of a larger one, with another growing not far away. She hadn’t thought she’d recognize that, coming from the other way. She’d been stung by its branches on the way out, too angry and, yeah, grieving, to bother walking around it.

Funny, the things you remember.

She can hear a voice ahead—loud, and angry. Some indistinguishable shouting, probably in Common. No response that she can hear.

She reaches to the side and Caleb is there, as he must have been all along, melting out of the mist to exchange a tense glance with her.

Molly’s grave is ahead, where the voice is coming from. Some fucker’d better not be looting.

Caleb continues to glide forward into the vast white. Beau hurries to keep up with him, and the voice comes clearer from behind the trees.

“I don’t know you! I have never known you, I don’t know who you are, and I don’t want to!”

Suddenly Beau is in the clearing, standing before Molly, one hand outstretched. No. No, he hasn’t—he has to remember them. Or—even if he doesn’t, he has to stay with them. Somehow, Beau is certain that if Molly leaves now, he’ll be gone. This is her second chance.

“Mollymauk?” she calls, her voice oddly double-toned. A smooth, deep voice, carefully scrubbed of any accent—and inexplicably, a rougher, more urgent woman’s voice, vaguely urban—central, if she had to guess, or western.

Her voice. It’s her own voice. Why was that surprising for a second?

Why’s she worrying about being surprised by her own voice? Molly is just in front of her, no, Molly is in the clearing ahead. Wasn’t she—no, she hasn’t gotten to him yet. He’s not gone yet. She needs to get to him.

She hurries through the trees—were there this many of them last time she was here? Has she ever been here before?

“Whoever it is you—you want me to be, they’re dead! Gone! Alright? They’re dead and gone, and it’s just me, and I don’t know you! I’ve never met you and I don’t want to! We’re not—friends! Just—just—”

The Molly is in front of her, and she brushes off her exhaustion to stumble forward and reach out. He looks near to desperate, shaking his head and backing out of her reach.

“Molly,” she says, harsh and grating.

He tugs on his hair, walks sharply away, turns. Paces back to her.

“You’re making it a bit hard to feel good about this,” he complains. “Stop. Stop looking at me like that. I don’t know you. The person you knew, whoever he was, he’s _dead_. Who I am now is—stop it. I’m _me_. I don’t _care_ what you want, I can’t be anyone but me. I won’t be anyone but me.”

It hurts more than it should to hear him say that. Somehow, she’d expected him to—to know her. But he doesn’t.

“Molly,” she says. She catches a glimpse of her clawed hand as she reaches out again, bathed lavender in the twilight. Then she blinks, and it’s dark skin and fingernails—she puts the thought to rest. “It’s me. It’s Beau. Do you remember me? I’m Beau.”

It’s not going to help. If he doesn’t remember, he doesn’t remember, and whatever weird magic is bringing him back to talk to her hasn’t saved _Molly_.

But he looks the same. He looks like Molly that night under the truth spell, insisting that he’s all he needs to be. He doesn’t want to be Molly, but he _is_. He has to be.

She takes a step closer.

She wishes she knew how to do this right—Fjord would know, or Caleb. Or anyone. Yasha. Yasha would know exactly what to do. What would Yasha do?

“I, uh. Do you want a flower?”

Molly blinks wide, flat eyes at her.

“What?”

Beau shrugs awkwardly, but she’s committed now. “A flower. I got it earlier. It’s, uh, colorful. You like that shit, do you want the fucking flower or not?”

This is a delicate situation and all, but Beau doesn’t know what the hell else to do. She thrusts a hand out with the weird flower.

Funny, but she kind of doesn’t want to let go of it.

Molly is just staring at her.

“Look, you can be—fuck, I’m not—you can be Molly, or—or not-Molly, or whatever. Just come home, asshole. We—you made Jester cry. Fuck. That’s not what I meant. I mean—just don’t be dead,” she says, thrusting the flower at his chest.

Slowly, his hands come up to accept it. Beau stays absolutely still.

_Take the damned thing_ , she thinks to him. _Take it, just fucking take it_.

He’s looking at her. Beau feels, oddly, like this is the first time he’s looked at her, this whole time.

“This isn’t how it went,” he says, grasping the blossom. “This isn’t what happened, you weren’t—Beau, duck!”

He pushes and she ducks as a glowing bolt whizzes by overhead. It’s immediately followed up by a lighting bolt that burns her skin even as she ducks and rolls to the side, towards Molly.

He grabs her wrist and sticks the flower back in it.

“Keep this. Wake up, Beau. You’re not really here. Wake up!”

“Wake up!”

Jester’s bright voice rings through camp.

Beau shakes her head blearily. For whatever reason, it’s pounding like someone came in and crushed it. She can feel her pulse in the pain it gives off, too fast and hard.

Must have been some nightmare, but she just can’t remember it now.

Just as well, she thinks, watching the Nein pack up somberly. She doesn’t think she really wants to remember her dreams.

Things are bad enough in the waking world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope my characterizations were okay, I am somewhat uncertain on Yasha's tbh.
> 
> Some groundwork is needed to establish the differences between my plotline and canon, but things should pick up the chapter after next. Thank you all for the kind comments, and please spare a second after this chapter to tell me what you think! What was your favorite part? What are you excited for?


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